Commentary on Coyle et al., "The assessment of the economic return from controlled clinical trials"

The 'time to payback' method described by the authors involves modelling the long-term costs and benefits of current practice (i.e. in the absence of a trial), which are compared to the impact of a prospective trial, including the cost of the trial. The model describing the impact of the trial consists of two sequential sub-models. The first sub-model describes the costs and benefits associated with the actual trial as well as the results of the trial. The second sub-model describes the long-term costs and benefits associated with the uptake of the alternative interventions which is based on the predicted trial results.